


stuck between history and tomorrow

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon prejudice against clones, Clones, F/F, Family, Flirting, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lesbians in Space, Long-Distance Relationship, Male-Female Friendship, Mandalorian Boba Fett, Parenthood, Planet Alderaan (Star Wars), Planet Nevarro (Star Wars), Planet Sorgan (Star Wars), Rebellion, The Mandalorian (TV) Season 2, The Mandalorian Darksaber (Star Wars), Trauma, ex-Rebel Omera, half-clone Omera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29115387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: After the Jedi leaves with the kid, Din's a mess, and Cara can think of only one place that might be able to sort him out. Which means the rest of the passengers on this awkward intergalactic road trip are just going to have to live with a bit of a diversion.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Bo-Katan Kryze, Boba Fett & Fennec Shand, Boba Fett & Jango Fett, Boba Fett & Omera, Cara Dune/Omera, Din Djarin & Boba Fett, Din Djarin & Cara Dune, Din Djarin & Cara Dune & Boba Fett & Fennec Shand, Din Djarin & Cara Dune & Omera, Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Din Djarin & Omera, Fennec Shand/Omera, Omera & Winta (Star Wars)
Comments: 40
Kudos: 92





	stuck between history and tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peradi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/gifts).



> I asked Radi what she wanted me to write for 12 fandoms of Christmas and she said "I don't know, what do you want to write," and I said "So how would you feel about a worried Cara dragging Din back to Sorgan to try to get him to recover, Boba and company in tow? And the world's most awkward reunion?" and she said "That would be hilarious" and here we are.
> 
> Some of the background I used will be familiar from my earlier fic, _have wisdom/like this_ , but I decided to give Omera a different origin story, for variety.

After the Jedi leaves with the baby, Cara is faced with several problems. Firstly, Din, who is sitting crumpled on the floor with his helmet in his hands, looking like he wants to pass out but can’t, secondly, Moff Gideon, who is unconscious and breathing like a seal, thirdly, the fucking New Republic backup, who were supposed to swoop in once they’d successfully killed or captured Moff Gideon and are nowhere to be seen, and fourthly, Bo-Katan Kryze, who is staring at the back of Din’s head like she thinks she ought to shoot him now and get it over with.

Okay, Cara thinks. Start from scratch.

“Din,” she says, crouching next to him. “You wanna put your helmet back on?”

“I can’t,” he says dully. 

“That’s incorrect,” Bo-Katan says, like she thinks she’s being kind. “There are plenty of Mandalorians who remove their helmets. It doesn’t change your _mandokar_.” She huffs and shifts her weight. “I think no-one can argue that you have what it takes.”

  
  
“I removed my helmet,” Din says. “I allowed another living being to see my face.”

  
“You showed your kid your face,” Cara says, glossing over what happened afterwards. “There’s nothing wrong with that.” She picks up the helmet, puts it back on Din’s head. He doesn’t fight her. That might be worse than the alternative, but she hauls him to his feet anyway. He stands, at least, once that’s done.

“We must decide what to do about the Darksaber,” Bo-Katan decrees. 

No, Cara thinks, we can shelve that for another day, when you’re not desperate and I might not have to kill you to keep this dumb bastard alive.

“Take it,” Din says listlessly. “It’s yours. You’re the heiress.”

“I don’t believe that’s how Mandalorian inheritance worked,” Fennec observes, taking up a seat on a terminal. She’s shit-stirring, because that’s something she enjoys. Cara supposes it’s nice to have a hobby in common with the boss, who calls Bo-Katan _princess_ every time he wants to see her grit her teeth. It’s a lot like Hoth and the never-ending Solo-Organa shitshow. 

“Prior,” Fennec adds, tapping her fingers idly on her rifle, “to the accession of the Kryze dynasty.”

Koska looks like she wants to start another fight, Cara does not have time for this, and Din is sagging in her grip. She needs to think fast.

“It was Gideon who brought up the whole trial-by-combat thing,” she says, hoping she sounds confident and smart. “Gideon also hid from us in the baby’s prison cell. The kid was shackled - he could have kept him up here and continued to lead his men. He didn’t do that. Because he knew you’d go after him, and he knew Din would go after the baby, and he knew Din would fight him for the baby. If Din lost, Gideon could just take his prize and jettison himself in an escape pod. If Din won, Gideon could either die knowing he’d never lost to you and believing that Mandalore would never be rebuilt, or live to gloat. And if you fell for his gloating, Mandalore would _still_ never be rebuilt, because of some shitty argument about legitimacy he created.” She kicks Gideon’s unconscious body in the thigh, rather than the head. Intelligence will not thank her for handing him over in pieces. 

There’s stillness on the bridge. Fennec is swinging one leg idly like she’s considering getting out the popcorn.

“Very clever, aren’t you,” Bo-Katan says, patronising as ever. 

Cara rolls her eyes. “You really want to let _Gideon_ win?”

“Unfortunately,” Bo-Katan says, “he was telling the truth. I lost the Darksaber in combat; to remain a legitimate leader, I must win it back in combat.”  
  
“Well, shit, I didn’t think you lost it down the back of the sofa,” Cara snaps, playing for time. Then there’s a deep sigh from Din like all the air has gone out of him, and he leans creakily down and picks up the Darksaber. Cara’s breath gets stuck in her throat. 

“Punch me,” Din says wearily. “Go on. Punch me in the face.”

Everyone stares at him.

“Just do it, would you,” Din sighs, and eventually, Bo-Katan takes two decisive steps across the bridge towards him and swings a mailed fist. (Cara tenses, wondering if a blaster shot will be next.) Din’s head snaps back, and the impact with his helmet rings; the slightest grunt escapes him. The Darksaber drops from his fingers, and rolls on the floor.

“There you go,” Din says. “You got what you want. I got what I wanted.” Even through the helmet filters, his voice breaks painfully; Bo-Katan isn’t the sort of woman who winces, but even she grits her teeth for a second. “We’re done.”  
  


He sits heavily down on the floor again, arm sliding from Cara’s grip. Bo-Katan stares at him, and picks up the Darksaber, clipping it to her belt.

“Your service will not be forgotten,” she says, and turns away, the ruler of glorious Mandalore in all her petty might. 

“I have to say I don’t remember him being this much of a mess,” Fennec observes, propping her chin on her hand.

“I think he’s sick,” Cara says. It’s not the right words, but it’s the only way she can think of to explain it.

It’s at this juncture that Cara’s comm buzzes with the information that the New Republic have finally arrived.

“You’re _late_ ,” she bawls into the microphone, in order to take her feelings out on someone. Anyone. Literally anyone who hasn’t just been forced to hand over their kid to someone who is (Cara’s pretty sure) the hotshot X-wing flyboy who used to hang about with Princess Leia and Solo, and who went missing some time around the Battle of Hoth and showed back up without a hand, Cara wasn’t paying attention. Clearly the Force was involved both then and now. 

Cara’s got a lot of questions about all of this, and no-one to answer them.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the pilot says, not sounding remotely cowed. “We got waylaid by some guy calling himself Boba Fett? Banthashit. Everyone knows Boba Fett got eaten by a wampa.”

“It was a sarlacc,” Cara snaps, “and very clearly, it wasn’t fatal. Get your useless carcasses and your intelligence analysts up to the bridge, this ship belongs to Lady Kryze the second you’ve cleared it of Imp shit.”

Fennec Shand cackles at the stunned silence. Cara ignores her, and looks down at the top of Din’s shiny bowed head. She never thought she’d know what colour his hair was, or what his eyes look like when he cries, and she wishes she didn’t know now.

“I hope you’re not including the weapons in that,” Bo-Katan Kryze calls over her shoulder. “You can have the _demagolka_ ’s research. I have no interest in that. But the weapons -”

  
  
“Way above my paygrade,” Cara cuts her off. “Take it up with General Draven.”

  
Bo-Katan spins on one heel, looking monstrously insulted. “ _Davits Draven_? I’ll have you know -”

“If he hates you, he’ll kick it upstairs to the Senate Defence and Intelligence Committee,” Cara interrupts. “How much do you like Senator Organa?”

From Bo-Katan’s face, the answer is clearly _not a lot_.

Bo-Katan and Senator Organa’s dislike appears to be mutual, because while the ship is immediately made over to Bo-Katan Kryze of Mandalore and her forces, the New Republic reserves the right to strip it of Imperial data and weaponry that violates galactic laws of warfare. Bo-Katan protests in the strongest possible terms, but it’s just her and her two fighters versus everyone else, with the exception of Din, Fennec, and Fett, none of whom seem remotely inclined to get involved. Fett thinks the whole thing’s hysterical, especially when the New Republic impounds all the shuttles on the cruiser, leaving Bo-Katan with no option but to fly out on the _Slave I_ or accept a lift from the New Republic. Since the New Republic won’t take her all the way back to Trask, that essentially leaves her making some expensive hops across the galaxy or flying with Fett and his sense of humour like the rest of them.

Bo-Katan has a lot of pride, but she also has very little ready money, so Cara foresees an unpleasant trip back. But she’s less concerned about that than the fact that Din isn’t speaking to anyone at all. He accepted the New Republic commanding officer’s speech of thanks with the curtest nod of acknowledgement Cara’s ever seen, and he provided his details for the reward money in writing. There are enough credits there he’ll be able to buy pretty much any ship he likes, but Cara doubts he’ll ever be able to get back something he likes as much as he did the _Razor Crest_ , if only because this is a ship the baby will never set foot on.

He’s still got the little metal ball the kid liked to screw off the controls and mess with. Sometimes he takes it out and rolls it between his hands.

On the third day, when Cara’s finished bullying and shit-talking Din into eating something, Fennec lounges into the galley and says: “Boba wants to talk to you.”

Cara accordingly heads into the cockpit. Fett has been sleeping and eating up here, partly because the ship is packed, and partly because - as he’s been very, very clear - he can’t stand Bo-Katan Kryze, and doesn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. Cara considers this entirely fair.

Right now, Fett has his feet up on the console and his helmet on the floor. “Dune,” he says, in his desert-cracked voice. “Take a seat.”

Cara sits down.

“Wanted to know if your friend is doing better,” Fett says, swinging idly in his chair and staring out at realspace. They’re making shortish jumps rather than flying directly, allegedly because Fett considers this more efficient for the multiple planets he intends to stop on, but probably also because he really enjoys winding Bo-Katan up until she snaps. Cara hopes she’s smart enough not to take the Darksaber out; Din would probably care enough to fight her again, and he might well win, which would create many additional problems.

“No,” Cara says. “Not really.” 

“Feel bad for the guy,” Fett says laconically. “From what Fennec says, the Jedi stole his son? Thieving bastards.”

  
  
That’s definitely not how Fennec put it, but if that’s how Fett chose to hear it, Cara’s not going to get through to him. She sighs. “The kid… he’s got these powers, and he doesn’t understand how to use them, and he doesn’t have any sense of proportion.”

  
“He’s a baby,” Fett says. “Right?”

“Weirdly long-lived species,” Cara says. “Din said he’s actually fifty years old. Which means… he’s a baby and he’s been tortured for twenty-five years.”

Fett’s chair actually creaks as he stops swinging. “ _Osik_ ,” he says, after a second. 

Cara lets that pass. “Din’s been looking for someone who can protect him and teach him to control his powers so he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else for as long as I’ve known them. The Jedi that showed up on the cruiser was looking for the kid to protect him. But… all Jedi are adopted, I guess. They’re all foundlings. The baby wanted to go learn, but he asked Din’s permission. He wanted Din to agree he could go.”

“So he rescues his kid,” Fett says, “and then gives him up. For the kid’s own safety.”

There’s a lengthy pause.

“Well,” Fett says, “I guess that would fuck you up.”

  
  
“I guess,” Cara says, and shrugs, because there’s nothing else to say. She doesn’t feel like explaining the way Din seemed to find his purpose in the kid; doesn’t feel like talking to Boba fucking Fett about how, sometimes, you get left adrift and you don’t know what to hold on to to make life worth it. Cara found Nevarro, and that planet’s hers now. Din found the kid, and now, out of love, he’s given him up to someone who can care for him better. Cara understands why, given the struggles Din’s faced just protecting the kid for a year or two, and given the kid’s so traumatised he doesn’t know the difference between a friendly armwrestle and a fight to the death: if the Jedi can protect him and communicate with him, they’re the best he’s got.

Doesn’t mean Din isn’t suffering. Cara doesn’t know how to pull him out of this.

“What are you going to do?” Fett says. “You clearly like the guy. He’s no good to himself like this. Going to waste away, get himself killed for that shiny armour. Man won’t even paint it, make himself a little less conspicuous. I offered to help.”

  
That has been in the back of Cara’s head. Din’s reactions are dulled, his will to carry on visibly weakened. People fight him for the beskar on his back on a monthly, if not weekly, basis. She lets him out into the galaxy like this, he’s going to get himself killed. Even on Nevarro, which was her previous Plan B for him, she can’t watch his back all the time.

Cara only knows of one person Din’s actually talked to about his _feelings_. She doesn’t think her odds of getting him to a therapist are good, but he’ll listen to Omera; he always did, for the whole few months they spent there. And Omera’s a parent. She’ll remind him to live, for his kid’s sake, in a way that gets through to him where Cara’s words don’t. The baby may live with the Jedi now, but Cara would bet her share of Moff Gideon’s bounty that he’ll find his way back to Din.

“How close are we to a planet called Sorgan?” she says. 

Sorgan looks pretty much like it did the last time Cara saw it - mossy, green, peaceful, full of krill farmers and not much else - but the village has changed a fair bit. They don’t land at the town, since Cara can’t begin to imagine the chaos that would ensue if five Mandalorians, a Marshal of the New Republic, and an assassin all disembarked and went off into the woods together, but there’s a suitably large clearing closer to the village. So close that Cara can glimpse it through the trees. The place has grown significantly. And acquired defensive redoubts, so far as she could see from the air. And she’s pretty confident their approach was spotted, which means that she and Din had better take the lead, otherwise this will end in tears. Omera’s a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of person; it comes from raising a baby alone in wartime.

“Where the hell are we?” Fennec says.

“Backwater skughole,” Cara says. “Friends of Din’s live here.”

“So this is where we’re dropping you off?” Fennec says, raising one elegant eyebrow.

“Not permanently,” Cara says. “I just want to see if they can get Din to talk.” She jerks her head in Din’s direction. “Look at him.”  
  
Fennec passes a clinical eye over him. “Dead man walking,” she says, and Cara’s concerned that might be true but she still wishes Fennec wouldn’t say it out loud. 

“Why are we _here_ ,” says Bo-Katan, sauntering off the ship with her goons in tow, like this too is part of her kingdom. 

“You’re welcome to stay on the ship, princess,” Fett says, following her off. He’s so polite it can only be some kind of threat, and a scowl passes across Bo-Katan’s face like a summer storm before she jams her helmet on.

Din ignores them. It could be just more of Din’s natural inertia when it comes to other people’s drama, but he doesn’t react to anything much at the moment. Cara thinks he’s grieving behind the helmet, but he won’t say anything, and it’s hard to know. 

“Technically none of you have to join us if you don’t want to,” she says. She would in fact prefer to leave as many of them as possible on the ship - she can’t think Omera will thank her for dropping a large number of heavily armed visitors on her head. But Fett’s curious about who could be a friend to a drifting Mandalorian with convictions as rigid as Din’s, Fennec’s naturally inquisitive and has taken to sticking to Fett like glue in case Kryze tries to knife him in the back, and Bo-Katan tends to think of everything she surveys as her business. When not badgering Din into basic personal care, Cara has found herself fending off all manner of personal questions about her past, her present and her future. 

All she wants is some fresh air, she thinks, and a cup of spotchka, and Omera’s blessed capacity for silence. She keeps thinking about the pilot who held Pershing hostage; the bile he spat about Alderaan, the sick joy he took in taunting her to her face, before Cara blew a hole in his. Normally it’s something she could shake off with a good fight or a better fuck or a few days kicking round the outskirts of Nevarro working on their further-flung security measures, something to take up her mind and let her stop thinking, but all she has to do right now is think. She needs to be using her brain, but that lets her brain run memories on the back burner, high-definition holos of things she can’t forget

- _yeah, I saw the teardrop –_

_\- did you lose anyone? –_

_\- a price well worth paying_ –

and Cara’s skin **itches**. Bo-Katan’s prying questions are only making it worse, and so is the way Fennec watches her, almost surgical in her precision, clearly wondering who on board the _Slave I_ is going to snap next: Fett, for Bo-Katan’s sheer presence, Bo-Katan, for the reverse, or Cara?

Cara entertains fantasies of just letting Omera shoot the lot of them, and then they break from the trees into a large cleared space beyond the krill ponds. There are more ponds than there used to be, and more defences, too, and some of them are made of parts of discarded AT-ST. There’s a welcoming committee clustered around, Omera’s aunt-in-law Yali standing ahead of the crowd and dressed as the headwoman.

Din lifts his head and scans the redoubts and the crowd; then he looks at Cara and tilts his head.

“Don’t know,” she says to him. She turns back to the rest of their group. “We’ll go and say hello. Let Din and I do the talking. They don’t know you, and they don’t trust strangers.”

The Mandalorian who didn’t join them on Gideon’s ship - Axe - huffs and shifts his weight. “What exactly are they going to do?”

“Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer,” Din says, which is the first actual sentence Cara has heard out of him since the baby toddled out of his arms and over to the Jedi.

Fett laughs. Nobody else says anything. Cara nods to Din, and they walk up to Yali.

“Hi,” Cara says. “Sorry for the oversized group. I told them to stay on the ship, but they wouldn’t.”

“No matter,” Yali says, her shrewd eyes flicking over all of them before resting on Din. “You are always welcome, you two, and friends of yours are friends of ours.” 

“Thank you,” Din says, heavily.

“Where’s the little one?” Yali asks, as if she’s concerned about the answer. 

Din doesn’t reply. 

“He needs to talk to Omera,” Cara says, “if she’s around.”

“No doubt she’s with the children right now,” Yali says, with an impressively straight face for a civilian who actually means _she is up on one of the roofs, with a sniper rifle_. “Invite your friends in. I’ll send one of the boys to find my niece.”

Not fifteen minutes later, Fennec, Fett, Bo-Katan, Axe and Koska have been formally introduced to the village, and Omera has been produced to stand forward with her most demure smile on her face and greet the strangers. Cara has to assume the formal introduction was a ruse to give her time to get off the roof, and it was probably intended to allow her time to put the rifle away, but she seems to have decided otherwise. It’s slung over her back. And if that’s the only weapon she’s carrying, Cara will eat her boots with krill on the side. 

“Welcome,” Omera says sedately, kissing Cara on both cheeks - Cara can feel her companions’ attention zero in on her, and doesn’t react; how does Din think she spent the weeks after he left? - and taking Din’s hands gently between hers. “You must all be very tired,” she says, but she’s looking directly at Din.

He says nothing, but he bows his head and grips her hands tightly - so tightly it must hurt, which is very unlike him. She tilts her head to look up into his face for a second, and whatever she can see through the helmet, it makes her frown. 

“Why don’t you go and make yourself at home while we make arrangements for your friends,” Omera says. “You know where my house is, I hope.” She glances sideways at Cara, and nods slightly.

“Come on,” Cara mutters, taking Din by the elbow and drawing him on, towards the house she remembers. The crowd of inquisitive villagers opens to let them pass, and then closes behind them. But Cara can still just about hear in the quiet, broken only by interested murmurs and shuffling feet, Omera introducing herself to the newcomers.

  
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” says Bo-Katan, whose only grace is that she is seldom obviously bored.

“Thank you for your welcome,” says Fett, who sounds peculiarly off-balance and rough.

“So you’re the sniper,” says Fennec with snake-like interest, a tone in her voice that almost makes Cara turn round and intervene. Fennec, she’s learned, is very proud of her reputation, and she dislikes competition; which is one reason there is none, not any more. 

“Among other things,” Omera says, smooth and charming, and Cara revises her concerns. It’s a lot more likely Fennec will try to get Omera into bed than she’ll try to wipe her off the map, and Omera, Cara knows, likes truthful women with hard edges.

Well. Cara bites the inside of her cheek. What Omera does with her time is not Cara’s problem, so long as she helps Din. Cara will find a bed somewhere in this village, whether it’s Omera’s or not; but she hopes it’s Omera’s.

The little house is almost exactly as Cara remembers it, except that when Winta sees them she immediately hides behind the bathroom screen.

“Kid?” Din says, surprised. Cara could bless the girl for getting a word out of him, even if it’s just shock.

"Mama said I should stay out of the way," Winta volunteers from behind the screen. "I just came to get my stuff. To stay with Tamani tonight."

Omera is very protective of her daughter: small wonder that five armed strangers caused her to hide Winta among the other village children. She must have used the time Yali bought her not to tidy herself up but to tidy away the evidence that a child lives here; sweeping an eye over the house, it looks like Omera lives here alone, with a bed for guests.

"Not from us, I don't think, Winta," Cara says. "We won't tell the others about you."

"They will not hurt you," Din says, rusty, but in a voice heavy with determination. Winta gives him a strange look, and sidles the rest of the way out from behind the bathroom screen. She has clothes and a stuffed toy and her datapad shoved into a woven bag, and she's at least five centimetres taller than she was when Cara last saw her. Cara's heart bangs against her ribcage. 

"Are you okay?" Winta says.

Din says nothing.

"Where's the baby?" Winta asks. "I thought, if you came back, you'd bring the baby." 

Din says nothing at all.

Winta's eyes widen, and her lower lip wobbles dangerously; Din's entire body slumps, and Cara's heart sinks. "He's not," Winta says, her voice creaking and squeaking, "he's not, he's not -"

"He isn't hurt," Cara says quickly, before the girl can get loud or cry, and takes her by the shoulders and shakes her a little. "He's okay, I promise. But he had to go with his family, and Din's… pretty sad."

"He _is_ his family," Winta protests.

Din sits down very hard on a kitchen chair which nearly collapses beneath his weight.

"Kind of," Cara says, though her heart wants to scream _yes_. She claps Winta on the shoulder, and ducks just out of the house to check the sightlines. Somewhere out of sight she can hear Yali giving a speech. It seems to be a long one. In any case, the visitors won't see Winta. "Okay. Clear off, Win. We'll explain later. Keep this quiet, okay? Don't run your mouth to Tamani."

Winta nods and hovers for a second, looking uncertainly at Din, but when Cara jerks her head at the open front door, the kid scurries away.

Din sighs, and rests his head in his hands. 

“Guess it’s just you and me,” Cara says, kicking out another chair to sit down on it. “Till Omera shows up.”

It takes a little while, but eventually Omera does show up, her familiar footstep on the veranda making Din lift his head and Cara’s heart seesaw uncomfortably with relief. She has no claim on Omera - their few weeks were nothing more than happy chance, a sweet memory both of them walked away from when the village got comfortable and Cara’s feet got itchy - but she can’t deny Omera promises a competency and a capability that has never let her down. Sometimes Cara just wants to know there’s someone in charge who isn’t a fool. Sometimes she just wants good orders, and the tools to follow them.

Omera’s smile is very sad. She catches Cara’s eye, but Cara can’t hold her gaze.

“I’m guessing,” Omera says, crossing the room to join them at the table, “this surprise visit has something to do with the baby’s absence.”

Din makes a horrible noise from inside his helmet. Cara flinches. She thinks he might be about to say something for a second, but he doesn’t, just rocks his head in his hands. 

Omera meets Cara’s eyes again, and Cara shrugs, hideously uncomfortable. Din’s always been a man of few words - fewer than necessary, sometimes - but this silence is wearing on her. It’s like he can’t bring himself to speak. 

“What did you do with Bo-Katan?” Cara asks, when the silence stretches too long. “Sorry about her. I tried _really hard_ to leave her behind.” 

Omera snorts. “She’s graciousness itself,” she says. “And she has several conspicuous weak points on her armour.”  
  
Cara saw no laser dots on Bo-Katan or anyone else, but the Klatooinians’ rifles didn’t have that kind of scope, and Omera’s unlikely to have drawn local attention by investing in another sniper rifle or a scope compatible with the one she’s got; and in any case, Omera very rarely uses a proper scope, much though you’d think she’d need one. Just another thing about which Cara asked no questions.

“Good to know,” Cara says. 

“We’re putting her and her minions up in the bar,” Omera says. “Fett and Shand declined our hospitality most politely; they prefer to sleep on the ship.”

Smart of them. Sorgan can be very uncomfortable, unless you’re sleeping with the most organised widow in town, and if Omera finds these people alarming enough that she’s hidden her daughter with the family who could most easily pretend Winta is one of their own, she’s not at her most hospitable. “You gonna give the armoured wonders mosquito nets?”

“Depends on whether they stop sneering,” Omera says. “Currently, no.” Her lip curls halfway. “We’ll have a feast tonight. To welcome you back. And welcome your strange friends.”

“Yeah. Like I said, they followed us home.” Cara pauses and glances at Din, who is still quiet; then she makes up her mind. “The baby was taken by a guy called Moff Gideon. I don’t know if you -”  
  
“I’ve heard of him,” Omera interrupts, with a sharpness that makes both Din and Cara go still. She waves her hand very slightly. “Go on.”

Cara’s always known that Omera has some Rebel ties; she never needed to be told the meaning of Cara’s tattoos, she got her training somewhere, and she hates the Empire more violently than anyone else in town, Cara saw it when they broke down the AT-AT for parts. Now she wonders afresh exactly what those ties consist of. “Yeah, well, he took the baby. Our weird new friends helped us get him back, but - you remember the baby could do… strange things?”  
  
“He was in every way an entirely normal toddler,” Omera says. “Right down to the putting everything in his mouth, whether it’s poisonous or not. I take it that levitating things isn’t normal even for his species, then?”  
  
“Well -” What the fuck kind of species was the baby anyway? Nothing Cara’s ever seen or heard of. “No,” she lands on, eventually, reluctantly. “Probably not. But, uh.. Yeah. He was a Jedi, if you’ve heard of those.”

“Only in stories.”  
  
“So… his people were Jedi,” Cara says, “and - well, we were really in the shit, Omera, it was some Clone Wars-type fuckery, killer droids everywhere, I thought we were all dead, and then this guy with a laser sword shows up -”  
  
“A lightsaber,” Omera says. “It’s called a lightsaber.”

Add that to the list of questions Cara has about Omera. “- okay, well, he saved our asses. And the baby…” 

The baby was _fascinated_ by that guy, who may or may not have been kooky Commander Skywalker from out in the sticks, Cara has since recalled the name but she can’t quite remember the man’s face and isn’t going to embarrass herself by looking him up on the holonet. From the very first moment the Jedi showed up on the security cameras the kid was enthralled. No; before that. He knew the Jedi was there when the X-wing arrived, and he was excited, and pleased, and as happy as Cara’s ever seen him. And as much as he cuddled up to Din, clinging to his leg until the very last second, he went willingly, of his own choice, and he asked Din to let him go. And Din agreed. Din took off his helmet and let the kid touch his cheek, and tears streamed down his face, and he _agreed_. Because parents let kids go when they must.

Cara has absolutely zero fucking clue how to fit any of this into words. 

“...he went with the Jedi,” she finishes lamely. “So he could learn to protect himself.”

“And you didn’t go with him,” Omera says, looking over at Din.

“No,” Din says wretchedly, but at least he’s responding. “I didn’t. I always knew I didn’t get to keep him. It was my duty to return him to his own kind, and I did.”

“You did the right thing,” Omera says softly, and Din makes that horrible sound again, and Cara figures it out at last: he’s crying, and it’s just the vocoder that makes it sound like a rancor’s death rattle.

“I don’t think the right thing would hurt so much,” he manages.

“I’m afraid that’s parenthood for you,” Omera says, very gentle, laying her hand on his knee, and yes: this is why Cara brought him here. Omera knows the words to say. She understands where he’s coming from.  
  
Cara hasn’t had a family since Moff Tarkin pulled the trigger. It only stands to reason she doesn’t have a clue. Cara gets up and takes a few restless steps towards the door.

“You don’t have to do that,” Omera says suddenly, and Cara turns around to see Din fitting his hands around his helmet and Omera laying her fingers on top of his to stop him taking it off. And Cara recalls all at once that last time Omera saw Din he was clutching his name to his chest and refusing to remove his helmet, on pain of exile.

“It’s okay,” she says.

“I’ve learned more,” Din says thickly, “about… other Mandalorians, other clans. It’s not necessarily exile to remove your helmet.” There’s a long, difficult pause. “I… am happy for you to see my face.”

There’s the faint sound of the seals disengaging, and the thud of the helmet being set down on the table.  
  


“My name is Din,” Din says, sounding defeated. “Din Djarin. Cara knows; so do the others. You are free to use it.”

“I will call you whatever you prefer,” Omera says, warm like a hearthfire, and Cara’s heart twists very hard in her chest. She lays her hand on the doorjamb, and stares out into the village. 

“Tell me what happened, Din,” Omera says.

“Cara already said.” Din blows his nose on something; it must get sticky, crying in a helmet.

“I want to hear it in your own words.”  
  
Cara finds she can’t stand to hear again what she has already seen in the silent eloquence of Din’s misery, and also that she feels unwelcome. Din can’t possibly want her to see the face he only revealed before because it was the baby’s last chance to look his protector in the eye; Din’s last chance to make that ultimate gesture of trust. She doesn’t want to usurp that privilege. It isn’t hers to take. And besides, the thought of looking him in the face and seeing what the last few days of loss and the weeks of terror before that have wrought on him is unbearable.

Cara walks out: neither Din nor Omera asks her to stay. She closes the door behind her, in case someone else should come along, someone else who doesn’t deserve Din’s absolute trust.

Someone like Bo-Katan, who’s probably wreaking havoc. Cara sighs. She can’t do much here, but at least if Bo-Katan’s making herself unwelcome she can shove the woman into a krill-pond. It might even make her feel better. And she should probably supervise Fett and Shand, anyway: fuck knows what they’re up to. She’s no longer resident in this village, but she still feels a degree of responsibility.

Cara sets off looking.

It doesn’t take long to find the rest of her party, and when she sees Bo-Katan eyeing up the krill ponds, she thinks she maybe shouldn’t have left them unattended for so long. She came here for Din’s sake, but she knows this community and likes it well enough, and four crosspatch Mandalorians and an inquisitive assassin are really too much to inflict on your neighbours. She sighs, and heads for the group. Yali can talk for hours - and is talking continuously - but Cara’s not totally sure how Kryze will react to being invited to tour the krill ponds, which seems to be Yali’s next move. The villagers have mostly gone back to their daily tasks, but a surprising number of those tasks seem to take place in the immediate vicinity. And they’ve got less trusting than they were when Cara first met them; she knows there are weapons hidden round about.

So do Axe and Koska, and they are young enough to worry. Fennec and Fett, perfectly well aware that they could kill all the villagers and escape without doing themselves all that much damage, and also that the villagers won’t act if they don’t feel threatened, are completely relaxed.

Winta is absolutely nowhere to be seen. None of the children are out of doors.

Fennec spots Cara first, and also acknowledges her first. “How’s the guy in the suit doing?” she says. “Your girlfriend sort him out?”  
  
“He’ll be fine,” Cara says, as stolidly as she can. The villagers’ ears are flapping. Small communities, Cara thinks, are bastards for knowing everything about you, and wanting to know just that little bit more.

“We all hope for his swift recovery,” Bo-Katan says, with a perfect absence of sincerity that makes Fett snort. “Do you anticipate a long stay here? Because I’m afraid that time presses for me and my fighters.”

Cara bites back a remark along the lines of _Din led you straight to the killer you swore he’d never be able to find, you owe him your time_ , because now she’s not quite so bored and purposeless all the time she sees the value of restraint, and because the only person who would thank her for throwing that lothcat in among the varactyls would be Fett. She doesn’t feel like entertaining him. “I stopped anticipating things when that X-wing showed up,” she says instead. “I am off the map. I don’t have a fucking clue what happens next. But I’m not leaving here until Din looks less like he wants to die.”  
  
A sympathetic murmur and a few gasps from the villagers. Bo-Katan glances at Fett, which is a mistake.  
  
“I’m happy to stay in the area as long as these kind people are happy to welcome us,” Fett says, clearly meaning _as long as it annoys you, princess, my ship is grounded_. “My good friend Din deserves a chance to recover.”  
  
Cara would love to know exactly how Din would react to being described as Boba Fett’s good friend, but she’s too busy watching Bo-Katan’s face for signs of an explosion to think about it. Bo-Katan struggles with herself for a second, but manages to rake up a smile and bow her head slightly. 

“Of course,” she says silkily. “We all owe him a great deal.” 

Cara wishes, just for a second, that Omera had taken the shot and put Bo-Katan in bacta for a few weeks. 

“I’d like to see him,” Bo-Katan continues, “if he’s up to visitors.”  
  
“You’ll have to ask Omera,” Cara says curtly. “She knows him better than any of us.”

Bo-Katan’s eyebrow fluctuates very slightly, in a way that feels like it wants to be an insult. Cara thinks about the krill ponds and how someone could disappear into one with hardly more than a splash; thinks about the other ponds, deeper into the forest, that steam with geothermal heat, and will never give up even the bones of the raiders she and Din and Omera stripped of their valuables. 

“Thank you for the information.” Bo-Katan nods in the direction Cara just came from. “The house over there, I assume?”

  
  
From this angle the village bar hides Omera’s home, but yes; that’s correct. Cara wants to play for time, she wants to keep Bo-Katan away from Din, vulnerable, and Omera, civilian, but she has no good excuse, and she is surrounded by villagers she feels a duty to protect. That Marshal’s badge has got deeper into her blood than she knew. 

“Let’s not burst in on a strange woman’s home,” Fett says, unexpectedly. “If she’s not receiving guests -”

  
  
“You may assume I know how to knock,” Bo-Katan says. “And she seems polite. I doubt she’ll shoot me for standing before her front door.”

  
  
“Doesn’t need you to be standing that close for her to hit,” comes a mutter from the villagers; Bo-Katan, Axe and Koska all jerk round in search of the speaker, but whoever it was is not visible, and all the villagers’ faces are very carefully blank.

Fennec laughs. “Is she good?” she says, and Cara hears again that intrigue, that curiosity.

“The best on Sorgan,” Yali says, and in her voice there’s a thread of dislike, but from the way she’s looking at Bo-Katan it isn’t meant for Fennec. There are places, Cara thinks, where you can ride roughshod over the locals and they’ll accept it. But Sorgan has known too little violence for that, and by the look of this village, it’s grown stronger and more prosperous - and also warier - since Cara last visited.

Bo-Katan’s lip curls in amusement; Axe smiles. Koska looks down at her feet.

“You’re fortunate,” Bo-Katan says gravely, “to have such a protector.”  
  
“I consider myself very fortunate,” Yali says. “In my niece. If you’ll excuse me. We all have duties to attend to.”

The villagers melt away. When Cara came before, Yali was still weak from injuries gained in the last Klatooinian raid, which accounts for the disorganisation Cara and Din witnessed; the previous headman had died and nobody had had a chance to take over. Now there’s a degree of discipline, and certainly the watchfulness of a community that likes guests, but distrusts incomers.

Cara deeply and profoundly doesn’t want to deal with any of this. She wants to stuff Bo-Katan, Koska and Axe back onto the _Slave I_ , and sit with Omera on the veranda, and talk about nothing.

_I want doesn’t get_ , says a voice in her memory. It’s her father’s. Cara hasn’t thought about him for a long time, but ’tis the season for inconvenient reminders of things that are gone.

She leads the group towards Omera’s house, thankful that Winta isn’t there. That’s another variable she doesn’t want to deal with. The door opens as they approach, probably because Omera’s hearing is excellent and they’re not exactly quiet, and Omera steps out onto the veranda, shades her eyes against the weak sun and stares. Cara isn’t close enough to see Omera’s hand grip the doorjamb to bruising, but she can imagine it.

“See?” Bo-Katan says, clearly unable to resist. “She’s friendly enough, clone.”

Neither Kryze nor her fighters have raised the subject of Fett’s heritage since the fight on Trask, possibly because it would have been a very stupid thing to do in a confined space. Kryze’s self-control must be weakening, or her desire to get the last word in strengthening, because she lets her voice linger over the word like she thinks it’s the worst thing she could ever possibly say to Fett. And Fett tenses and snarls low under his breath, and the smile is wiped off Fennec’s lips, but neither strikes Cara as forcibly as the look she sees on Omera’s face.

Omera’s face, from which the demure, pretty mask of friendliness has dropped entirely, and on which is suddenly marked the strangest of cold expressions. Cara has never seen a look the like of it before, not on Omera’s face. It stops her dead.

Axe, who proves every day the reasons that Bo-Katan picked Koska for the fire team, walks straight into her back.

“What’s got into you, dropper?” he snaps, and tries to shove her forward. Cara, out of sheer absent-minded spite, does not move.

Omera, who doesn’t need a sniper’s scope, who has such good hearing and moves so quickly and who never told Cara anything Cara didn’t ask to know -

Cara has never seen Boba Fett with the helmet off, but there were a very few old clones that ran with the Rebellion, and with that information, Omera’s face becomes suddenly very familiar, cold expression and all.

“I’m thinking,” Cara says, moving forward at last. “You should try it.”

“Hmm,” Boba Fett says, and Cara wonders if he saw that cold look on Omera’s face too.

They reach the veranda, and Omera has not moved. Behind her, in the house, Cara sees Din; he hasn’t moved from his seat, but his head is up, alert, and that’s already better.

Cara takes the two steps onto the veranda in a single stride and lingers a second at Omera’s side, waiting. Omera doesn’t move or acknowledge her; her eyes are fixed on her guests, as Fennec steps onto the veranda, and then, when Bo-Katan moves to follow -

“Did you have something in particular to say to me, Lady Kryze?” Omera says, and her voice is as silvery and courteous as ever, and as cold as bright steel. “If so, say it from outside my house.”

Bo-Katan halts, and tilts her head, and that curious half-insulted smile curves her lips just slightly. “Excuse me?”

“You insulted my father,” Omera says coolly. 

Bo-Katan’s slight snort is full of disbelief. “I beg your pardon. I’m not sure Boba is old enough to be your father.”  
  
“No,” Fett says heavily, that same strange roughness in his voice from before. “But I had many older brothers.”

Axe laughs, bright and mean. It drops into a specific cold stillness that comes from nobody else seeing any humour in it at all, and dies there.

“My father has been dead for a long time,” Omera says to Fett, matter-of-fact, “and I don’t claim any living family either on his side or my mother’s, but you are still welcome.”

“ _Vor ent’ye_ ,” Fett replies. The words, whatever they are, win the tiniest of smiles from Omera.

Cara doesn’t dare to look back at Din and see how he’s taking this.

Fett steps past Bo-Katan, who looks at a complete loss, and takes up a comfortable position leaning against the wall. “My friend Fennec was interested in your rifle,” he says to Omera. “Step inside. I’ll mind the door. We can talk later.”

“If you could tell Din Djarin I am here to speak with him,” Bo-Katan orders, her voice sharp with annoyance and something else. Cara remembers hearing it before, on the bridge of Moff Gideon’s ship: there’s a particular unease she gets when things are out of her control, and it makes her unpleasant. “Since I can’t come to him.”  
  
“I can hear you fine,” Din says from inside the house. There’s a weight and a spark to his voice that tells Cara he’s angry on Omera’s behalf; she’s almost relieved to hear it. His voice has been empty of feeling since the child left. “Thanks for your _concern_.”

Despite everything that’s just happened or might happen now, the indignant wet-cat look on Bo-Katan Kryze’s face is the funniest thing Cara’s seen in a very long time. She turns away, and catches the spark dancing in Fennec’s maliciously mischievous eyes that tells her she isn’t the only one that wants to laugh.

“So,” Omera says evenly, completely ignoring the last duchess of Mandalore seething on her doorstep, “it’s heavily modified, but I believe that’s an MK rifle you’re carrying?”  
  
“Specifically designed for long-distance work,” Fennec confirms blandly. “I have modified it, yes, I need greater versatility in my work. Yours had the look of old Imperial hardware.”  
  
“It was scavenged from some unwelcome visitors who were mostly armed with Imperial knockoffs,” Omera confirms. “It does at least take standard charger packs, which makes it possible for me to maintain it out here. It doesn’t have a great range, but then, as a rule, I don’t need one.”

“At least it probably doesn’t jam at the worst possible moment,” Cara says, putting the kettle on. 

Din sits back in his chair and folds his arms. “Poor maintenance?” he says judgmentally. “My rifle was a mess after you climbed out of that pond with it.”

“Oh, _fuck_ off.”  
  
“Jumped in or fell?” Fennec grins.

  
“Jumped,” Omera says dryly. “It was part of a very stupid but admittedly very brave plan.”  
  
Cara shrugs. “It worked,” she says.

It’s almost a friendly conversation, she thinks; but Fennec is still an assassin, and the edges of that cold look are still on Omera’s face, and there are still three idiots and a legendary bounty hunter simmering outside, only the distance of an open door away.

Cara got what she wanted, at least up to a point: Din is more himself already. A few more days will do him good. But - fucking _hell_ , she thinks, looking around at the veneer of domesticity they’re surrounded with, Omera growing animated as she trashes the rifle she uses more effectively than most other humans in the galaxy could even dream of doing, Fennec laughing and Din listening, the shadow of Boba Fett outside the door. At what _cost_?

When Fennec saunters out and Omera slings the rifle over her back - she trusts Bo-Katan little and less than Cara does - Din stirs, and speaks. But he speaks in Mando'a and Cara hasn't a clue what he said, except that Omera looks sad, and she replies in the same language.

He stands, and reaches out to clasp her elbow; her smaller hand grips his in return, and they stare at each other, hard.

" _Su cuy'gar, burc'ya_ ," he says, and Omera smiles very brightly.

"I understood none of that," Cara says, when he steps out and exchanges a few words with Kryze.

"He asked me why I didn't tell him," Omera says, her smile dimming slightly. "I reminded him that Bo-Katan Kryze is just another person who doesn't know what sentient looks like. I've met too many of them to tell my story lightly."

Cara doesn't know whether to hope Kryze heard that or not. She swallows.

"You could have told me," she says. "I don't mean you should have done. I just mean - you could have done. It would have been safe."

Omera's smile turns to the last gold light before sunset, and she touches Cara's face so gently it almost stings, and Cara brings her hand up, clumsy and awkward, and wraps Omera's fingers in her own.

" _Vor ent'ye_ ," Omera says, "it means thank you."

Cara ducks her head.

Omera grips her hand. "Go and find Winta for me," she says. "I want her under my eye, now everyone knows."

Cara didn’t know it was possible to ignore someone politely, but she learns new things from these villagers every day. Bo-Katan, Axe, and Koska are all firmly ushered to the bar, given refreshments, and left to get settled in with their temporary accommodations while everyone else gets on with the business of dinner. Returned to her mother’s side, Winta watches the newcomers with wide eyes, and dares a phrase in Mando’a when Fett speaks to her; Cara still has no idea what they’re saying, but whatever Winta says draws a smile from Omera and a pleased huff from Fett, before Din calls out to her in the same language and she runs off to help him. With him watching out for her, Cara doesn’t need to worry about Kryze and her minions. Kryze’s interest in Omera has leapfrogged various items of concern on Cara’s list of problems, but Din is an excellent deterrent to any plans Kryze might have made or might be remaking, in light of Omera’s heritage.

“Very domestic,” Fennec drawls, from alarmingly close to Cara’s left ear. “Pretty woman, cute kid, bucolic life, and everyone here thinks the sun shines out of your ass; what the hell took you to Nevarro?” 

Cara turns to look her in the eye and opens her mouth for a flippant answer, but one doesn’t come. She shrugs. “I had a bounty out on me. Would you bring that down on a community like this?”

Fennec sweeps an experienced eye over the village. “They’re not doing so badly.” 

“It didn’t used to be like this.” Cara remembers the defenceless village she and Din arrived at, the patches that were still scorched, the places that were heavily mended, the people who still walked with a limp or carried sleepless nights on their faces.

“All down to the lovely lady with the sharp eye, I assume,” Fennec says, watching with a more than professional look on her face as Omera walks away and takes Winta’s other hand. “She isn’t the one doing all the talking, but she seems like an ideas woman to me.”  
  
Cara completely forgot to worry about Fennec’s designs on Omera. “She puts the work in,” Cara says, carefully omitting to mention the ways the village only lends Omera authority in a crisis. She’s still an offworlder, still wasn’t born in this community; with her late husband’s aunt now in charge she has influence, but Yali’s the acceptable leader.

Fennec hums, low and thoughtful.

“Sorry,” Cara says. “There isn’t room for three in that bed.” 

Fennec grins wide and ruthless. “What makes you think you’re invited?”

Cara rolls her eyes hard. 

“Whenever you ladies are done,” Fett grumbles, obviously bored. He’s staring out towards the forest, to where one of the krill ponds still has a collapsed edge and a well-maintained bit of defensive walling recalls their fortifications. “Dune, how the fuck’d you bring down an AT-ST here?” 

“Oh,” Cara says. “We trapped it in one of the krill ponds - dug it a metre deeper and knocked the legs out from under it.” She points out the repurposed plasteel, the village droids that now contain Imperial components. It seems like, in her absence, the villagers scavenged everything. Which is only good sense.

That whole afternoon, Cara keeps Fett and Fennec close by her, and Din keeps Winta and Omera under his eye. Fett and Fennec question Cara about the raiders, and the defence, and how she got involved in the first place; Fennec's questions tend towards Omera, but the close attention with which Fett listens to the answers suggests that Fennec's asking for more than one reason. Cara answers carefully, well aware that it would be easy to box Omera into something she would prefer not to deal with, but also uneasily certain that this is the first time Fett's seen anyone like kin for many long years. The way his eyes catch on every slight glimpse of her as they move round the village is telling. He's not interested like Fennec is; he wants to know how she interacts with others, character, aptitude.

Fett's a clone; he's never denied it, nor seemed ashamed of it, that Cara has noticed. He gets angry when Kryze snipes at him, but that anger is reserved for her disdain. But his accident of birth means, Cara guesses, that looking in a mirror is seeing his father's face beneath the scars. The acid marks streak thickly across his scalp, and the hair there is white rather than dead, but Fett shaves it all off daily like he doesn't want to see. He probably looks like the father he remembers, and Cara who on her worst days can't look in a mirror or speak aloud without hearing her aunt's turn of phrase, seeing her father's tilt of the head, doesn't even want to _imagine_ looking in the mirror and seeing nothing but a perfect replica of her mother. As matters stand, those are the days when Cara fights and speaks nothing but Basic; her family spoke only Alderaanian at home, and she was the only one quick with her fists as well as her temper.

Omera must look like a sister of Fett's might have done, a sister or an aunt or a niece, similar but not the same. Maybe he looks at her and sees the shape of a different family.

Cara catches herself before she loses her footing and falls into a krill pond. That would have been a damp and embarrassing reminder of how stupid it is to speculate about men like Boba Fett.

"She is distracting, isn't she," Fennec says, meanly delighted; the kind of companion who likes to catch you out, always smirking, except when she looks at Fett, and is suddenly serious. A friendship built over years of working for the same Hutt clans, Fennec said, professionally neutral as their employers swung from sworn brotherhood to equally sworn enmity, and eventually with far more in common between them than monetarily divided loyalties.

"Mind your footing," Cara says, and being a grown adult, does not trip Fennec into the krill pond.

"The fuck's in there anyway," Fett says, eyeing them suspiciously. Cara supposes that if the last hole you fell into left you ruinously scarred, you'd be the cautious type.

"These aren't the dangerous ones," she says airily. "Nothing in these but krill. They're not even that deep."

Now both Fennec and Fett are staring at them suspiciously. Cara smiles, and remembers the raiders' bodies that the villagers pulled out of the ponds, stacking them out of the way. You can drown in three inches of water; it takes very little strength to hold someone down hard enough. Din and Cara didn't have to teach them that.

"So how many corpses are at the bottom of these," Fett rasps.

"None," Cara says, and her grin widens. "That would poison the krill."

"Sure," Fennec says, disbelief dripping off every word.

"No bodies in the ponds, I promise," Cara says. It's technically true: the geothermal pools they dumped the bodies in are quite a walk away, and by now there will be nothing left but silt the colour of bone.

Very practical kind of place, she thinks, Sorgan.

Dinner is very awkward. The villagers have knocked together rough, wobbly tables and benches, and the guests have all been seated at one end, the better to hate each other at close range. It hasn’t escaped Cara’s notice that she and Din bookend the visitors, Din on Yali’s right in a place of honour, Cara on Omera’s left, a physical barrier between the strangers and the villagers. Din isn’t eating, helmet firmly sealed onto his head, but he seems content to stay where he is, armed. And Omera has a blaster strapped to her thigh under that split overdress.

Cara keeps thinking about that, and not for security reasons.

Cara glances up and around, disguising it as admiration for the solar lanterns and the pretty sunset. Bo-Katan is right at the end of the table, which is either a place of honour or convenient for shoving her into the krill pond immediately behind her or both. With that armour on she’ll very likely sink fast. Her minions flank her in any case - quiet and sullen after their long afternoon in the empty bar, hardly prisoners, but neither welcome nor unwatched. Bo-Katan bears it with more grace than they do, but Cara took the time to download a short primer on recent Mandalorian political history, and she’s confident Kryze has seen much worse.

The minions, Cara notices, are being bitten to death by the midges. So is Kryze, very likely, but her iron will expresses itself in a refusal to swear and slap exposed, vulnerable skin. Omera only gave Cara insect repellent, but she gave enough to share, and Cara - that vicious lilt on _clone_ still ringing in her ears - chose who to share with. She confines her grin to her plate, and nudges Omera’s foot with her own when Omera gives her a questioning look.

Winta eats with the rest of the children. Omera has been careful not to tell Kryze her name, though it probably makes little difference now, and Fett didn’t answer when Kryze asked. The kid runs up to her mother, though, when she’s finished eating, and asks permission to go and play, and Kryze speaks to her then. Just the fact that she does so makes Cara’s shoulders tense rigid, and she sees Din catch the way Fett goes still and straighten himself, like he thinks he might have to tackle Fett or Kryze. But it’s Kryze’s lack of ease, her sickly sweetness, that sets Cara’s teeth on edge, and the twitch of Omera’s hand towards her concealed blaster that has Cara calculating how quickly she can roll out of Omera's way and tackle Winta safely to the floor. Kryze doesn’t know mothers, if she tries to get information from Winta that Omera denied her; she doesn’t know children either, with that _come-here-sweetie_ tone. Cara earned Winta’s trust by teaching her to fire a blaster safely and telling her to get the fuck out of a tree before she broke her fucking neck.

“What’s your name?” Kryze asks, and Winta’s eyes flash round the table with a precocious flicker of her mother’s swift calculation before she buries her head in Omera’s hair and mumbles something indistinct. Cara thinks it might be _Princess Leia_ , which would be objectively hilarious under any other possible circumstance.

“She’s shy,” Omera says, her tone dropping a blasterproof shutter on that conversation. “We don’t get many strangers round here. Yes, you can go and play,” she adds to Winta, who books it into the darkness as fast as her little legs can carry her.

Yali is pretending not to eavesdrop. Her hand has closed very hard on a table knife, and Cara thinks: Yali’s children live far away, off-planet, and she hasn’t seen her grandsons for years. Her great-niece is the only descendant she’s seen grow up, child of a dead nephew and lost sibling. People kill for less, or try to.

Cara kicks Din under the table and jerks her head very slightly. He nods, and then Cara turns her attention back to Omera, who still hasn’t spoken.

Kryze tilts her head and smiles. “It was only a question,” she says, all innocence.

“Was it,” Omera says. Her eyes are dark, her jaw set. “If I’d wanted you to know my daughter’s name, Lady Kryze, I would have told you when you asked. Stay away from her - and keep your fighters away, too. I don’t give third chances.”

The Mandalorians in blue smile. Nobody else does, except Omera. It’s not a friendly smile.

“Are you enjoying the dinner I made for you?” she says. “Which you are eating off the plates I brought to you?”

Axe makes to get up, face working. Koska is frozen. Kryze raises a hand, and he subsides. She is no longer smiling.

“You wouldn’t be so foolish,” Kryze says darkly.

“No,” Omera says. “Had I done it, I wouldn’t have told you. I would simply have waited.” She takes a bite of her food, chews, swallows, smiles again. “ _Cuy’e beskariise._ There is more than one kind of armour. Not all of us have the luxury of wearing the kind that suits you so well.”

Axe and Koska share a glance. There’s a long silence, and then Bo-Katan deliberately cuts herself another forkful. It’s a kind of surrender, Cara supposes.

“That was hot,” Fennec observes, smirking at Omera. Fett rolls his eyes.

Omera laughs and winks, but she’s taken Cara’s hand under the table, and though her palm is not clammy with fear, and her grip does not tremble with rage, Cara thinks Omera could probably break all her metacarpals like this.

  
  


Omera sends Winta to bed early, and retires herself. Cara gets the feeling this is less about Winta needing her sleep than it is about Omera needing to get away from Bo-Katan's stare, but she follows anyway. Din nods as she gets up and goes; he looks like he has no intention of moving from his place, so long as he still has Kryze's Mandalorians under his eye. Cara's selfishly grateful, though she's not sure when or if he ate this evening.

Winta's full of questions as soon as they get out of earshot. Omera tries to answer them as fairly as she can, without telling the kid anything that's likely to traumatise her; Cara herself learns little that's new, now that she knows about Omera's parentage. Winta has always known, by the sounds, and she speaks Mando'a to Omera with a fluency that suggests Omera put as much care into maintaining her heritage as she did into hiding it. It's no surprise, Cara knows. Omera is nothing if not deliberate.

"Do you want me to stay?" she asks Omera, when Winta is settled in bed with her datapad and two downloaded episodes of _Princess Winter_ , which she likes because the titular princess has the same name as her, spelling allowing. She is not supposed to download any more episodes, but Cara would bet good credits she'll download three more and fall asleep in the middle of the first. "I know Din's sleeping on your couch. I don't want to assume -"

"I assumed you would stay with me," Omera says, pushing her hair off her face. In this lamplight she looks tired. "If I assumed wrongly -"

"No," Cara interrupts, and summons up a smile. "No, if you think I'd turn down a chance to share your bed - if you're offering -"

"I'm offering," Omera says, almost caught on a laugh, and Cara wonders how this can be so clumsy now, when it used to be as simple as a glance and a kiss.

"Offer accepted," she says, and when Omera lays her hands on Cara's waist, Cara slides her fingers into Omera's hair.

Omera hears footsteps before she does, and doesn't bother to hide it. Cara feels Omera's mood change, and drops her hands to her shoulders. "Kryze?" she says after a moment, and Omera shakes her head.

"I thought it was Din for a second," she says, frowning slightly. "It's Fett."

Omera has military training from somewhere - the Rebellion, Cara's always assumed, though it seems she may have started earlier than that. She's also a parent, and a very careful one. Her weapons are always secured away from Winta's curious fingers, though Cara has seen Winta around blasters, and she always locks her hands behind her back and looks but doesn't touch like that was something she was carefully taught to do. You can never count on young children to retain such lessons, so Omera remains cautious. But tonight the rifle is out and lying on the table, and Omera has a blaster strapped to one thigh and knives in her boots. Cara's not sure how well either of them will sleep.

"Worried?" Cara breathes as the footsteps approach. 

Omera hesitates and then shakes her head. Cara wonders which is truer: the negation, or her hesitation. She lets her hands slide down from Omera's shoulders, caressing her arms, and squeezes Omera’s hands tightly before letting go. She doesn't want to say it's okay; it might not be.

Omera smiles faintly, and draws her blaster before she opens the door. 

A silence.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," says Boba Fett. 

"No. Winta's asleep. Did you want to talk to me?"

Fett's own hesitation sounds like Omera's, little alike though most of their mannerisms are. 

"Yes," he says finally. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind," Omera says. "Come in."

Fett treads indoors with heavy, creaking steps. He pauses when he sees Cara, but only to laugh shortly. "Fennec will be disappointed."

"If it was any of her business," Omera says, amused, "she might be." 

"I wasn't intending to speak with an audience."

"No. We'll talk on the veranda. I don't want you to wake Winta up." Omera slides her blaster back into its holster, and puts the kettle on.

Cara sits down on the sofa, leans back into it, and pretends to be absorbed by her comm. Nonsense message from Greef, useless wittering from Glefat, news bulletin from the marshal network -

"You've lived here a long time?"

"A few years. Winta's father was born here; my cell dissolved after Endor, and I didn't feel like staying on-planet."

"So he brought you here?"

"No. He died when she was a baby." 

"Sorry to hear that."

Omera shrugs wearily. "Neither my first dead body nor my last." 

"Can't have been easy, raising a kid alone."

"Can't have been easy, raising yourself alone."

A particular silence. Omera offers Fett a smile as the kettle boils. "We get the holonet out here," she explains. "I have read about the First Battle of Geonosis, and I can do basic maths."

"Got claws, haven't you?" Fett says, somewhat subdued.

Omera shrugs again, pouring three cups of tea. She hands one to Fett, who stares at it dubiously, and passes a second to Cara. The third she takes for herself. 

"Keep an ear out for Winta," she says to Cara. "I don't want her to overhear this."

Small chance of that with headphones and a show she's always intently absorbed in, Cara thinks, but hell, it could happen. She nods and returns her attention to her comm. Another futile missive from Glefat, who keeps asking her for travel receipts like he's either a proper accountant or in charge of her, notice of the indictment of Moff Gideon on war crimes and kidnapping, assault and torture of a child -

The front door half-closes behind Omera and Fett, but Cara, who doesn't have headphones in, can still hear everything.

"Sorry about Kryze," Fett says. 

"I've met plenty like her." Omera sounds bored more than anything else. "So long as she leaves me and mine alone, we'll be fine."

"Well. Good." The sound of spitting. "What is this?"

"An acquired taste." Omera laughs. "Try not drinking it scalding hot."

"Maybe I'll try tipping it out." A pause, and then Fett is businesslike again. "You were Rebellion, from what Fennec says. That how you know Dune?"

"No. Caben and Stoke hired Din to deal with our little raider problem, and Din brought Cara along." A pause and sigh. "I was never regular Alliance. My father deserted after the massacre on Umbara and settled on Mimban. I was born there. He and my mother joined the Mimbanese Liberation Army." 

Fett whistles through his teeth, even as Cara closes her eyes involuntarily. "Empire cut them to shreds." 

"Yes," Omera says, and is silent, for a while. 

"You can't have been more than thirteen when the MLA were put down."

Cara has a better idea of Omera's age, so she should be less shocked, but even she feels the breath drain from her lungs when Omera corrects him almost indifferently. "Eleven. Mam put me on a ship out as a stowaway, then covered the retreat with _Buir_."

There's a pause again, and then Fett says: " _Jatnese be te jatnese_."

Frankly, Cara never paid attention to anything at school, but her languages are beginning to feel like a particularly gaping hole in her skillset. 

"The best of the best? Yes, but what makes you say so?" Omera sounds amused again, rather than blank.

"It's what the trainers used to say. What the clones were raised to be."

"Not what you were raised to be?"

Cara catches her breath and waits.

"No," Fett says finally. "I was raised to be Jango Fett's son." 

"Which is different?" Omera prods.

"What happened when you were eleven?" Fett retorts, a warning: and for the moment Omera accepts it.

"We ended up with the Partisans on Kashyyk," she says. "For a while. Then Salobea. Gerrera blew up his links to the Alliance and took off for Wrea. A few of us stayed, built a new cell."

"I don't think Gerrera's leadership would have suited you."

"Not in the later years, it didn't." Omera sighs like she's remembering something, and Cara tries to remember everything she ever knew about Saw Gerrera besides his martyrdom on Jedha, because it sounds like those are memories she doesn't want to ask Omera about directly. But she can't concentrate on her memory when she's listening so closely to Omera.

"We had some contact with the Alliance," she says. "Salobea was never a major battleground but it was strategic enough that they were glad to secure it. They sent us communications specialists, a few explosive techs, a detachment of Pathfinders once. Winta's father was Alliance. A demolition expert. He stayed with us a year; at the end of it Winta was alive and he was dead." 

"She knows?"

"She knows who her father was, yes." A note of warning enters Omera's voice. "She doesn't know about my war record, no."

"Sounds like you should be a hero of the New Republic," Fett says, very nearly an insult, but Omera just laughs.

"Ask Cara how that works out for people like us," she says, " _ad be Vhett_."

" _Vhett'ad_ ," Fett corrects. "You sound like a clone."

"And proud of it. I take it you learned not to be."

The silence that falls is so instant and so complete that Cara nearly gets up to intervene. She would put good credits on Omera fouling up her grammar on purpose to trap Fett; if she guesses that, so must he. 

"When I was a boy," Fett says, stiff and defensive, "I wanted nothing more than to be my father's son. My father... recognised only one of his sons. He considered the rest products. I learned to follow his lead. My brothers deserved better."

"You were a child."

"So were they." Fett sighs. "But that's blood long spilt."

Cara relaxes onto the couch; a thigh muscle twinges unexpectedly, released from tension, and she grimaces and rubs at it. 

"Would you have known him?" Omera says, and her cool tone doesn't disguise the faintest hint of yearning. "His name was Anza."

"No," Fett says, heavy with something that's not quite regret: Cara thinks he's still a little angry, to be counted with his brothers, however much his heart has changed since he was a boy who hated like Kryze does. "Sorry."

"Don't apologise," Omera says wryly. "You're the only person who's even half like me I've ever met."

"There were clones with the Alliance. If -"

"The Imperials tried several times to get hold of my father, dead or alive," Omera says. "They had a use for him. He could do things that baseline humans can't. Well, you know."

Fett grunts. Cara thinks of everything she's ever seen Omera do that is just slightly more than she expected she could do - every load that should have been too heavy, every leap that should have been too far. Every shot that should have been impossible.

"He taught me to keep it quiet," Omera continues. "In case they came after me, the softer target, instead." Cara's hand clenches involuntarily on her neglected comm. "I never told the Alliance anything about me."

A pause. "But they know here."

"They know, but they don't understand. They have no idea why it matters." Omera shifts: Cara can hear it in the rustle of fabric. "Sorgan has never known war."

"And that's why you raise your kid here."

"Exactly. It's safe."

"Raiders."

"Nowhere is completely safe. Din considered it safe: he nearly left the baby with us. With me."

"You're a good mother," Fett says gruffly. "What changed his mind?"

"A bounty hunter Cara found and killed in the woods. He had a fob on the baby."

"Whole galaxy out for that kid," Fett observes. "He did a good job keeping him alive." 

"He's a good father." Omera sighs. "Which is how he ended up in this state. Excuse me."

Even without Omera’s enhanced hearing, Cara can pick up footsteps approaching the veranda; only two sets, she thinks, listening hard. She gets up as quietly as she can and edges over to Winta’s door: through the crack she can see that Winta’s datapad’s screen is lit up, but the child herself is fast asleep. Satisfied, she treads quietly back towards the front door.

“Fennec,” Fett says. “You look bored as shit.”  
  
“You look very cosy,” Fennec says, in her ironical voice. Cara opens the door and finds Fennec lounging against a load-bearing pillar of the veranda, Din standing by with his arms folded.

“Catching up with a cousin,” Fett says, with surprisingly little hesitation. “You know how it is. Decided to join the party, Dune?”

Omera is sitting on the floor of the veranda, back against the wall; she tilts her head and smiles up at Cara. “I take it Winta’s still asleep?”  
  
Cara nods. “Didn’t hear a thing.” 

“Kryze asked about you two after you’d gone,” Din says, obviously not pleased by this. 

“She can join an orderly queue,” Fennec says, sitting down on the veranda step. Omera snorts and prods her in the thigh with a toe, and to Cara’s surprise, Fennec just grins. 

“I meant Omera and Winta, not Omera and Cara,” Din says, still more annoyed.

  
“And you said?” Omera asks.

  
“I told her it was rude to pry.”  
  


Fett chokes on the tea he seems to have given another try, and sprays it everywhere; Cara recoils, but she laughs too. “I’d give a lot to have seen her face,” Fett croaks, evilly.

“Yeah. Well.” Din shifts his weight from foot to foot. “She and her minions went to sleep. Or plot. Or whatever it is they do in their free time.”

“Mythologise Mandalore,” Fett says acidly, and waves Fennec off when she raises both eyebrows at him. “Believe me. Under the Kryzes, it was never that great, not if you didn’t fit their look, or kept the Resol’nare.” He points at Omera. “Don’t trust her.”  
  


Omera stares at him. “Is that _likely_?”

“I have to agree with Fett,” Din says irritably. “I never saw Mandalore, but Bo-Katan Kryze is one of the least reliable people I’ve ever taken a job from. She doesn’t care how many lies she tells to serve her ends.”

  
  
“Maybe that’s who she needs to be, to retake Mandalore,” Fennec suggests idly. Twin snorts emerge from Din and Fett, the pair of them sounding, for an instant, as if they have a great deal in common.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Cara says.

Fennec squints up at her. “You think they’ll get New Republic aid?”

  
  
“Going on the apparently mutual hatred between Kryze and Senator Organa, who leads the Senate Defence and Intelligence Committee, I fucking doubt it,” Cara says.

Fett cackles. “Senator Organa? Leia Organa?”

  
“I don’t think there are any others,” Cara says - much more sharply than she means to, going by the silence that falls. “Considering the Death Star.”

“Easy,” Fennec says, after a second. “The last time anyone in the Outer Rim saw Leia Organa, Jabba took her captive and dressed her up in a cantina girl outfit. Last mistake that stupid sleemo ever made.”

Cara huffs and leans into the other side of the door. Omera rests her head against her thigh, a silent grounding weight.

“That fuckhead we took Pershing off getting to you?” Fennec says. 

“What fuckhead?” Din says. 

Cara waves her hand. “I’ll explain another time.” She shifts her shoulders against the door. “No. Maybe. Some things don’t just go away.”

Surrounded by people who have seen the worst of a galaxy at war, she actually feels they might get that.

“Well,” Fett says, after a beat. “Organa strangled Jabba to death with the chains, or so I hear. Suppose it’s too much to hope she’ll do the same to Kryze.”

“Probably,” Din says darkly. He didn’t seem to dislike Kryze so much before, though he plainly didn’t trust her; Cara thinks it’s her curiosity about Winta getting to him, her refusal to take no for an answer. He’s maybe thinking about protecting the baby from her; about how he never had to, only because she wasn’t interested.

“Senators have longer-lasting ways of making things sting,” Fennec says lazily, leaning her head back against a pillar. Omera brought a lantern out onto the veranda, and Fennec’s eyes glitter obsidian in its yellowy light as she adds “Or so I hear,” and bats an inquisitive midge away.

“Didn’t know you were political,” Din says.

“I’m not.” Fennec bites off the word with decision, and stretches her legs out. “But I _am_ clearing off back to the ship. I’m tired, and it seems like my spot here is taken.” She grins at Omera. “Let me know if you get bored of law-abiding virtue.”  
  
Cara is too busy choking on her own spit to hear Fett laugh like gravel rolling, or Din saying, baffled, “Cara? Virtue?” Omera has her head in her hands and her shoulders are shaking.

“Out of my house, all of you,” she says, lifting her head to reveal a face streaked with tears of laughter.

  
“Not _in_ your house,” Fett says snidely, settling in like he intends never to move from a krill farmer’s front step. But when Fennec gets up, lifts a hand, and walks into the darkness he sits in silence for only a few more moments before rising, and replacing his helmet on his head. “I should turn in too.” He looks towards the silent shadow of the bar; there are no lights on there, but parts of the rest of the village are still awake. “I’m a poor sleeper, though. I like to wander if I can’t doze off. Don’t be startled if you hear me walking.”  
  
Din stiffens slightly, and Omera lifts her head. Cara takes good care not to let her breath catch in the silence.

“Don’t kill her,” Omera says at last. “Or her followers.”

  
  
“Even if she goes after your daughter?”

“Even then,” Omera says. The blaster is back in its holster; her fingers tap over its grip. “If she does that, she’s mine.”

Cara wonders, if she found the right Pathfinders, if she called up Kes Dameron and asked him who served on Salobea, what kind of stories she’d hear. And if Omera would choose to tell them herself.

Fett’s grunt is more pleased than not. “ _Returc’ye mhi_ ,” he says, and follows Fennec out towards the _Slave I_.

Din’s head turns to watch him go.

“Don’t trust them, either,” he says, when green and red armour has vanished into the trees.

“Don’t worry,” Omera says. She gathers the lantern, and Cara reaches a hand down to pull her up. “I don’t.”

“Fett’s right about Kryze, though. I might sit up.”

“Sleep,” Omera says, definite enough to be an order. She smiles thinly at Din. “Bo-Katan Kryze is nosy, imperious, and selfish, but she isn’t a fool. You don’t need to sit up.”

“Caution pays,” Din says darkly, and Cara’s stomach swoops. This isn’t about Kryze, not really; it has to do with whatever happened on that hilltop on Tython with the yellow standing stones and the pillar of blue light that Fennec described to her.

Omera smiles faintly, and lays a hand on Din’s arm. “Don’t punish yourself for things beyond your control,” she says, very gently. “You need rest. You deserve it. You’re not likely to get all that much of it on my couch, so don’t deprive yourself.”

Din’s shoulders slump. “If I’d just been more _careful_ -”

“Stop that,” Omera says. “You did everything you could, and then more.”

“If I’d never taken him to Tython. If I hadn’t left him on that stone -”  
  
“You still can’t be sure he’d be safe.”  
  
“He’d be with _me_ ,” Din says. Even through the vocoder his voice cracks, and Cara looks down at her feet, remembering the way tears cut down his face, wishing she didn’t know.

“All parents have to let children go,” Omera says very gently. “Some leave their children as foundlings. Some die to ensure their escape. _Most_ , in kinder times, see their children grow up and build their own lives.”

Cara swallows past the memory of the unread messages she received when she surfaced from basic training to the news of Alderaan’s destruction: all the messages she never saw before her parents died.

Kinder times, she thinks, _right_.

“I know I did the right thing,” Din says. “I know it was the right choice. I couldn’t protect him.”  
  
“You did do the right thing,” Omera says. Her hand lingers on his shoulder. “I’m afraid no-one promised that it would be easy.” 

He ducks his head, and says nothing.

“Come on,” Cara says, more roughly than she intended. “You should eat and sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. Forget about Kryze. If she comes round I’ll push her in the fucking pond.”

Din huffs, but he steps indoors, and takes off his boots at least. Omera picks up the lantern and studies its light, her face unreadable.

  
“Omera?”

“We’ve all seen better days,” Omera murmurs, and as she closes the shutter of the lantern the last of its light glances off her bitter, fleeting smile.

Cara wakes up in the morning and no-one has tried to kidnap or kill Omera and Winta, which is a net positive. Din is awake and watching Winta eat breakfast; Omera, too, is already awake, and comes in knocking dirt off her boots and pushing a hood off her face. It's got colder overnight.

"I slept in, huh," Cara says.

"You needed it," Omera says, in the same no-nonsense tone she used on Din last night. This isn't fair, Cara thinks; she's not the one who just lost everything. 

"If you say so," Cara replies, remembering uneasy sleep, stirring from too-familiar bad dreams to find Omera's back pressed against hers, tense enough that Cara knew she was awake; but when Cara turned over and asked what was wrong, Omera only smiled and stroked her fingers through Cara's hair until Cara fell back to sleep. Omera must have slept very little, but she looks fresh as the morning sky now. "What did you do with Kryze's minions?"

"Stoke took them hunting. They're accustomed to city fighting, I think, so I'll be extraordinarily surprised if they catch anything, but it will keep them busy and out of the way." Omera puts the kettle on. "Have you eaten breakfast?"

Cara shakes her head, and pushes a hand through her hair, struggling to figure out what she should say or do next. Din pushes out a chair for her at the table, and for lack of anything else better to do, she sits down at it.

"Din, Yali has a major project on checking all the village roofs and piping for the winter," Omera says. "If you could help with that, we'd be very grateful. Winta, you're late for school."

"Mmrgh," Winta complains, jamming a bread roll into her mouth and scrambling to her feet.

"Late is late," Omera says implacably. Winta scuttles out, and Din follows her more sedately.

Cara doesn’t know what to say. So she eats breakfast in silence.

“Din seems better,” Omera says, making caf.

“He was,” Cara begins, struggling with her words, and then gives up and shakes her head. “Not doing good.”

“I saw.” Omera slides a cup of caf along the table to Cara, and sits down with her own. 

“He’s talking now, at least.” Cara watches Omera’s face. “You know he doesn’t talk a lot, but…” Cara shrugs uncomfortably, and returns her stare to her plate. “I’ve seen it before,” she says to her cutlery. “When people lose… everything.”

There were Rebels who turned their faces to the wall, after Alderaan. Cara wasn’t one of them. With a fight still before her face, she saw no reason to despair when she could rage instead. 

The New Republic she’d been forced to quit was another matter. She’d wanted to drown in a bottle then, or in a fight. But then she’d come across Din, and he’d led her to this village, and then to Nevarro. And in Nevarro she found purpose. It’s hard to watch Din lose his.

“Yes,” Omera says, matter-of-fact. “But the baby isn’t dead. He isn’t gone forever. He’s with someone who can protect him; Jedi care for their young like nothing else.”

“Your father told you that?”

Omera nods. “My mother always told him to leave off the fairytales. But he liked to tell me stories.” Omera’s thumbs rub up and down the sides of her cup; she stares into it, unseeing. “The baby’s a Jedi. Jedi padawans - that’s what _Buir_ said the young ones were called - need care from their own kind. No-one else can keep up. But just knowing that child - he will find Din again. I would bet my life on it.”

“Din said they would see each other again,” Cara says. “But - he’s still…”

“Parents tell their children what they need to hear,” Omera says dryly. “If they waver in private moments, or they fear, they keep that hidden. It can still consume them. And Din’s miserable right now. He believes the baby lost to him forever.”

Cara has gone off her food. She pushes the plate away from her. “You never - even when Winta’s dad died -“

Omera shakes her head. “No. There was always something new to do. I had a baby, and a lot of battles to fight, some more literal than others.”

Cara absorbs that, along with the last inch of her caf. “Will he get better?”

Omera nods. “I think so.” She finishes her caf, and they sit in companionable silence for a few minutes.

“What about you?” Omera says, after a while, surprising Cara so much she loses control of the rock of her chair and lands hard on all four legs. 

“Me?” she says blankly. “I’m fine.”

“Liar,” Omera says, too loving for Cara to do anything other than redden helplessly. “You’re off-balance. And you slept very badly.”

“You didn’t sleep at all,” Cara says, trying to change the subject.

“I really _am_ fine.”

“Clone genetics?”

“Parenthood. Who was that fuckhead with Pershing who upset you?”

Cara blinks, and then remembers what Fennec said last night. “Oh. Nobody. Just some dumb fucking Imp with the usual dumb fucking banthashit about Alderaan deserving the Death Star. He taunted me. I blew his face off. It’s fine.” She shrugs like there isn’t a lump in her throat.

“If it were, you wouldn’t look like you do now,” Omera says gently. 

Cara opens her mouth and then closes it again. The silence stretches long, but Omera isn’t afraid of a little quiet: she waits Cara out.

“I guess,” Cara says, and clears her throat with difficulty, “I thought… beating the Imps again would feel better.” She looks down at her abandoned plate and pushes the scraps around with her fork. “I’ve got commendations and bounty credits coming out of my ears, but Din’s my friend. If I hadn’t got in a fight with him I wouldn’t have…” Nevarro, a Marshal’s badge, any of the nights she’d passed with Omera. “Anything. And he looks like he doesn’t even care if he dies.” She folds her arms. “I just don’t want to see him go back to where I was. After… ditching the Republic, and everything. My family didn’t even get to see the Republic restored, and - what was it even worth, in the end? I don’t want him to end up there.”

Omera says nothing.

“I saw Din cry. I saw his _face_. He took off his helmet so the kid could see his face.” Cara shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t think the others know what it means to him, not really, but - I feel like I should never have seen.”

Omera stands up, thoughtfully, and steps around to Cara’s place; she pushes Cara’s chair out, with Cara in it, like the extra weight is nothing, even as the floorboards creak a protest. Cara’s breath gets stuck in her lungs, and her heart double-thumps as Omera steps between her and the table. Omera never pretended to be delicate, but this is a strength she hasn’t shown Cara before.

Omera takes Cara’s hands in her own, and kisses scarred knuckles, calloused palms. Cara finds herself hanging on those dark eyes like they're the only source of truth in the galaxy, which can’t be right but does feel good.

“Do you remember what I told Din?” Omera says, and when Cara shakes her head dumbly, she says: “You did the right thing.”

Cara squeezes her eyes shut; they sting. She grips Omera’s hands too tight, but Omera shows no sign of discomfort. She leans down and kisses Cara’s cheek, right over the firebird.

“It will be all right,” Omera murmurs. “It will be, Cara.”

Cara turns her head, and leans into a kiss that tastes like relief. “I’ll believe it if you say it,” she whispers, when they break apart, and Omera smiles and leans her forehead against Cara’s. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

Omera withdraws, and her smile wavers.

“I’m not mad,” Cara says hastily. “I just mean - if you ever get bored of pretending you can’t do things, if you want to show off, I’m your woman.”

There’s a startled halt in Omera’s breathing, and then she chuckles. “You realise it’s been a very long time since I was fighting fit. And I’m - what would Kryze call it? A halfbreed. Not one of the original supersoldiers.”

“Let’s leave her out of it,” Cara says, and almost before she’s finished her sentence Omera has lifted her to her feet like she weighs nothing, taking her so much by surprise that she staggers against Omera and swears on a raw breath. Omera laughs, and lets Cara catch her mouth with her own.

“Okay,” Omera says, smiling. “Okay.”

They leave the front door as it is, but Omera’s bedroom door bolts closed.

Cara sticks with Omera for the rest of the day. Fennec says she's maintaining her cybernetics, an operation which means she's shut herself in the _Slave I_ with a med-droid for the foreseeable future. Fett is bored, but Winta has a history project on; Omera provokes him into grouching about the _truth_ of the Clone Wars, and leaves him with the kids, irritably correcting everything their history texts say.

"This _dikut'la osik_ Imperial issue?" he demands, turning Winta's datapad upside down with disdain as Winta gasps and giggles a translation to her friends, who go off in laughter.

"The Sugano system is unaffiliated," Omera says dryly, which means _yes_.

Fett deletes the textbook. Winta yelps and gestures rudely at him, which he seems to find more satisfactory than not. Omera he's still a little wary around, and Cara can't decide if it's that she knew one of his dead brothers or that he thinks her more dangerous, but Winta, a generation removed, treats him with only a degree less warmth and mischief she shows Din, and he returns the favour by teaching her bad words in Mando'a that Din and Omera had kept from her. "None of you read that rubbish," he orders the kids. "Banthashit from beginning to end. _This_ is how the Clone Wars started -"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Cara asks Omera, heading off in the direction of the maintenance Din is already helping with. They are the same height; their strides hit evenly, and their fingers brush together as they walk.

"He won't let them set themselves on fire or drown in a krill pond," Omera says, unruffled, and then darts Cara a mischievous look. "For the rest - well, either way, I think it will be educational."

Cara snorts. The kids are a lot more likely to learn swearwords than history from Fett, but if he's enjoying ranting, he's doing fine. And in deference to Omera's strongly held opinions about weapons left loose around her daughter - and her daughter's friends, who have been less relentlessly trained in weapons safety - he is less heavily armed than he might be. 

Din gives them both a squiggle-eyed look when they finally show up. Cara couldn't say how she knows this, given he's wearing the helmet, but she does. Something about the tip of the head, maybe, or the deadpan voice in which he calls "Nice of you to join us."

"We're considerate like that," Cara says, grinning up at him. If things had gone differently, it might have been Din in Omera's bed. They didn't. It isn't. Cara thinks she has every reason to be smug about that.

Din snorts into his vocoder. It sounds horrible, even from four metres up; he is using his jetpack to hold him steady at the top of a roof where he's adjusting some piping. Omera gives the wall a measuring look and then sets her toe to a foothold Cara would have dismissed at once; in two easy strides she's up on the roof and moving over.

Strength and grace are two different things, Cara thinks, watching her until Yali comes along, smacks her on the arm in a friendly kind of way, and tells her she's needed to get cleaned and refreshed solar panels up onto the other end of the house. It's not actually a home, but one of the brewhouses where they make spotchka, and the machinery is powered by a collection of solar panels which have been painstakingly removed, cleaned by droids, and retuned by Caben, who is much better with machinery than a spear.

Thankfully. Cara remembers how shit he was with a spear.

Cara's pretty used to being asked to do the heavy lifting. She heads round to the scaffolding without any fuss, and starts carting panels up onto the brewhouse roof.

Din has extinguished his jetpack and is sitting on the opposite side of the roof to Omera, the peak of the thatch and a set of instructions on battered flimsi between them, tools attached to Din's belt. It looks like the piping is more complex than Cara assumed, or like its replacement is a bit more fraught than she realised. Din certainly doesn't seem to understand it all that well, not on a first glance: the two of them are having to work through the instructions painstakingly.

Cara settles in with the solar panels. Now she’s up here, the others are lifting the heavy panels up on a pulley system, so she can replace them in their slots. They’re pretty old, the kind of thing the Rebellion resorted to when they didn’t have anything but goodwill and guts, and consequently Cara’s seen them before. The honeycomb wedges of them are familiar from plenty of bases, and from being roped into bodge jobs by quartermasters and maintenance technicians who just need someone to do the heavy lifting.

Din and Omera are talking at the other end of the roof, audible to Cara only because the sharp wind picks up their words; down below they must be inaudible. Neither raises their voice. 

Cara isn’t sure she’s ever even heard Din shout. Even during the fight against the raiders, he left most of the yelling to her. He’s as soft-spoken as Omera; he picks no unnecessary fights. She wishes again he could have had his quiet life here with his kid. She wishes Moff Gideon had known when he was beaten and quit before he ended up returned to a New Republic jail cell. Not because Cara isn’t glad to have taken him in, but because she would have liked to see Din and the kid living in peace, just to prove it could be done.

At first they’re just puzzling out the instructions together, and Cara lets their words slide in one ear and out the other as she fixes panels back into place. But then, it seems, they have the gist of it, and they work together in silence for a while.

And then Din says very abruptly: “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go back to. The covert is gone. The kid is gone -”

“Not forever.”

“I know what you said, but…” Din lapses into silence, and then picks up again. “I don’t know where to go.”

“Having the intention of going somewhere is already an improvement,” Omera says dryly.

“I don’t want to go back to bounty hunting. I don’t care about picking up small-time snotrags in bars to drag them back to county jails that only want to fill a quota. I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve never done anything else.”

“The reward money for Gideon buys you time,” Omera says, “and some very important ears. There will be more people like him you could find.”

Cara looks up, and sees the quizzical tilt of Din’s head. “You seem sure.”

“I am,” Omera says. “A lot of Imperials slipped through the net. There are a few people who have thus far escaped justice that I’d like to get my hands on myself. And I only knew a very, very small part of the galaxy.”

“I never asked about your war service.”

“I try to put it behind me. _Buir_ and Mam dreamed of a world where I could live in peace.” She gestures over the peaceful, busy village towards the rickety schoolhouse, where Boba Fett is probably still giving several enthralled preteens his version of recent galactic history, unless he’s got bored. “Or if you want to do something totally different - you have plenty of credits now, Din. You could study, or travel. Set up as a farmer. Learn a trade. Find some Mandalorians with more between their ears than Axe and Koska.”

Din snorts. “I don’t know. I never thought.”

He sounds lost. Cara directs her attention more carefully to the panels. Hearing him so uncertain is strange and painful: the whole time she’s known him he’s been full of purpose, and his hesitation is just another sign of his upended world.

She’d fix it if she could. Finding out if it really was weirdo Commander Skywalker who took the kid to the Jedi might be a start; Cara knows Kes Dameron well enough, and Dameron’s wife Bey was religious, might know more about where the Jedi can be found these days. And they had a kid of their own. They’ll be sympathetic to a parent.

“Got to tell Fett to drop me off somewhere,” Din says.

_Nevarro_ , Cara wants to yell. _You moron._

“Why don’t you ask Cara if she could use a hand?” Omera suggests. “Enforcing the law must be quite the job.”

“I already asked her for so much,” Din says, beaten down. Cara’s patience parts company with her good sense; the two are never closely entangled anyway.

“What do you think friends are for, you dumb bastard?” she calls down the roof, and then almost immediately remembers some illuminating conversations she had with the Armourer, when they cleaned out Nevarro; about a man who kept himself strictly to himself, all business, and even among his own shared very little of his life or doings. It’s possible Din never claimed any friends until the baby turned his life upside down.

Din eyes her with stupefaction. Cara rolls her eyes.

“Come to Nevarro,” she says. “Greef will be thrilled to see you. There’s work enough for both of us. You can figure your shit out there.”

“Are you sure?” Din says. 

“Yes!” Cara brandishes a wrench for emphasis. “For fuck’s sake, Din.”

Din laughs, rusty but real. “I’ll take your word for it,” he says. “Okay. Thank you, Cara.”

“Don’t thank me,” Cara says darkly. “I’m going to put you to work.”

But Omera’s face is bright and smiling. Almost as much as it is when Kryze and her minions are led back by Stoke, who would evidently like nothing more to do with them, and who equally evidently caught nothing. Kryze’s armour is muddy to the hips and she looks grouchy.

“Did you have a pleasant morning?” she yells up at Omera, who finishes with the piping, declines Din’s offer of a lift to ground level, and walks along the roof tree to Cara with perfect assurance. This display of balance sends Cara’s heart into her mouth until Omera reaches her and lays a hand on her shoulder, but Kryze only looks sour.

“Delightful, thank you,” Omera calls down, but her smile is only for Cara, and Cara grins back, thinking about that bedroom door bolted closed. “Quite busy.”

“I suppose Fett’s around somewhere?”

“He’s teaching the children history,” Omera says, taking hold of the pulley and helping Cara fit the last piece of panel back into place.

“You left _him_ alone with the _children_?”

“Why not?” says Din unexpectedly, now at ground level. The helmet remains as impenetrable as ever, but Cara thinks that set of his shoulders means a glare. “He is family, after all.”

Omera turns towards Cara to hide her face from those below, but Cara can see her wicked grin, and her own lips twitch in response.

“Think she’ll write this out of _her_ history books?” Cara says quietly.

“Oh yes,” Omera says, still grinning. “Bet on it.” She leans forward, and when Cara leans into her space, takes a handful of Cara’s shirt and pulls her in for a kiss. “There are worse fates than being forgotten by the likes of her.”

“Tell me about it,” Cara says, and entirely ignores the peanut gallery down below.

  
  


Cara lingers longest in the village, before they leave: Din won’t let them take off without her, and the village children are in any case still poking around _Slave I_ and asking annoying questions about spaceflight, so she has no real fears of being left behind, but she still doesn’t know what to say to Omera, and this time she wants to leave with more than a kiss and flippant thanks. But she stands before Omera wordless, and Omera, smiling, waits.

Cara clears her throat. “Thank you,” she says. “For helping Din.”

“It was nothing,” Omera says, and then, because she has the brains round here, she steps forward and rests her hands on Cara’s shoulders, leaning in to kiss her. Cara drops her rucksack, the better to slide her arms around Omera’s waist and pull her close.

“Write to me,” Omera says, when they break apart to breathe. “Tell me about Nevarro.”

“Yeah,” Cara says, and it comes out not much more than a breath. “Yeah. I will.”

"Ditch Kryze as fast as you can."

"Fett will dump her on Trask before you can say Mandalore."

Omera rolls her eyes. "And keep an eye on Din."

"Two eyes," Cara says dryly, and Omera grins even as she pushes Cara's rucksack aside with a foot and leans in for another kiss. But when she breaks away she doesn't lean back; she closes her eyes and tucks her face against the side of Cara's throat, and Cara can feel her draw in and release a shaky breath. Cara wraps her arms more tightly around Omera's shoulders, and listens to her heart thundering in her ears.

"Don't worry about us," she says. "Either of us."

"I've heard that before. You stormed an Imperial cruiser," Omera says, somewhat muffled but audibly exasperated. Cara grins, and says nothing to that. There is nothing to say.

Eventually, Omera shifts, and Cara lets go. Her eyes are dry, but the skin around them is tight; Cara doesn't look too closely. She clears her throat again instead. “Keep me posted. If anything changes.”

They’ve both seen galaxies upended several times in their lives. Anything could happen, and frequently does.

“Deal,” Omera says, and closes the distance once more, like all the cold space between Nevarro and Sorgan is nothing more than a kiss away; and then she draws apart and says maliciously “Good luck on that tiny ship with Kryze.”

Cara groans. Omera’s laughter drives her out of the room.


End file.
